I posted yesterday about one of the recent Court of Appeals decisions. At the risk of going back to the well, I want to highlight another of those cases today. (I've got something else in mind for tomorrow.) In State v. Revels, available here, the defendant was convicted of second-degree murder. She appealed, claiming that the trial court had erred in failing to instruct the jury on self-defense and imperfect self-defense. The fact were as follows. The defendant and her husband split up and the husband took up with another woman, who eventually became the victim. The defendant and the victim had at least one run-in prior to the murder, and then, one night when both the defendant and the victim were out "cruising" -- which I didn't know people still did -- they ran into each other at a gas station. The two "began fighting, hitting each other with their fists and pulling each other's hair." The defendant was winning the fight when the victim pushed her into the back seat of the car the victim had been riding in. None of the witnesses saw what happened in the back seat, but shortly, the victim stumbled back out of the car, followed by the defendant, who was swinging a bloody knife. The victim had been stabbed three times, including once in the heart, and she died of her wounds. A key dispute at trial concerned the origins of the knife. The man the defendant was dating at the time of [...]
Faculty Coordinators
